TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE ON THE DOOR Every year at the Garden Museum Spring Plant Fair, we gather expert plant growers and specialist nurseries from around the country to sell some of the best garden plants you’ll find in London.
From shade specialists to plants for pollinators, meet the growers and pick their brains on what will flourish in your garden, balcony or allotment. Stalls will include Great Dixter Nursery and Beth Chatto’s Plants & Gardens, providing a rare opportunity for Londoners to shop garden plants grown by these beloved and historic nurseries.
Curated by Susanna Grant, garden designer and founder of Hackney-based shade specialist plant shop Hello There Linda.
Programme
Unlocking the Power of Youth-led Nature Recovery
10am-10.45am: book tickets
What this next decade of nature recovery presents, aside from an exhilarating explosion of life, is the largest nature engagement opportunity this country has ever seen. Across the UK, young people are refusing to accept a future where large-scale nature-loss remains unchecked. Now is our opportunity to learn from, be inspired by, and, most importantly, include young people in the drive towards a regenerative future. This session will talk you through the benefits of teaming up with young people for undertaking nature recovery work, how you can do it on sites you own or manage, and upcoming future opportunities. Facilitated by Youngwilders – a youth-led non-profit accelerating UK nature recovery and involving young people in the process and movement.
A World of Sweet Peas
11am-11.30am: book tickets
Join renowned UK Sweet Pea breeder and grower Phil Johnson, and Swedish Sweet Pea authority Cecilia Wingård, who have combined their abundant bouquet of knowledge, to create a new 240-page floral bible, A World of Sweet Peas, which is bursting with fascinating information on why this annual scent sensation, has become so beloved and cultivated around the globe.
Becoming Kin
11.45am-12.30pm: book tickets
Join Sui Searle gardener and the creator of @decolonisethegarden, and Shama Khanna a London-based artist, educator and garden designer who grows, as they discuss how gardening might help to connect us to a sense of place, to ourselves, to each other and to our more-than-human kin.
Fruity Walks
12.15pm-1pm and 2.30pm-3.15pm: book tickets
Urban fruit tree forager Divya Hariramani, will be taking small groups on a journey around Lambeth to showcase the urban fruit trees you might have missed and the stories behind how they arrived and the people who planted them.
Power in the Land
1pm-1.45pm: book tickets
Food grower and writer Claire Ratinon talks – and answers questions – about organising around workers’ rights as a member of Solidarity Across Land Trades (SALT) which is a grassroots trade union fighting for better standards of pay, working conditions and cultures for those in land-related trades. Whether you are a volunteer, gardener, grower or landscape architect, this is an informal space for anyone involved in gardening to find out more.
Setting Up a Micro Nursery
2pm-2.45pm: book tickets
Hannah Fox worked at the esteemed Marchants Hardy Plants for 10 years, primarily as a propagator /gardener but ended up running the business. Hannah has now set up her own micro-nursery, Bright Green Fox, from her own garden, using every bit of space she has available. During this talk, Hannah will share her tips for making the most of a limited space, being choosy with plants, getting the right kit and keeping track of it all, with a few propagation techniques thrown in along the way.
Public Planting and How to do it Better
3pm-3.45pm: book tickets
After setting up his own nursery Zophian Plants four years ago and frustrated by the often limited plant palette for drought free planting, Toby Shuall has been researching, through trial-and-error, plant species that provide food and habitat for wildlife, are drought tolerant, hardy and look great. His focus is on exploring different low intervention ways – working with sand and aggregates – to create low maintenance, high impact plantings. This is an essential talk for anyone interested in greening cities, low intervention gardening for wildlife or a south-facing garden they don’t know how to plant.
Stalls include
-
Great Dixter Nursery
Great Dixter Nursery
We are delighted to welcome Great Dixter Nursery to this year's Spring Plant Fair! The Nursery team will be bringing a selection of garden plants grown at Great Dixter's on-site nursery, a rare opportunity to buy these plants in London.
The Nursery was started by Christopher Lloyd in 1954, specialising in plants he deemed garden-worthy. We remain a small, personal and professional nursery. -
Beth Chatto's Plants & Gardens
Beth Chatto's Plants & Gardens
Beth Chatto’s has been propagating plants since the 1960’s, from our garden and nursery in Essex. Now over 2,000 varieties of plants are available, spanning sunny to shady locations and dry to damp conditions, mainly herbaceous perennials, but with a selection of bulbs and shrubs.
-
Vegelicious of Hadleigh & Benton Irises
Vegelicious of Hadleigh & Benton Irises
Herbaceous and Tender Perennials, Benton Irises and Cedric Morris Plants all grown in our Nursery in rural Suffolk.
-
Moore & Moore
Moore & Moore
Specialising in choice, unusual, and rare plants for shady places, they also have an interesting and select collection of plants which will attract pollinators to your garden.
-
Zophian
Zophian
Zophian Plants is a new nursery specialising in drought tolerant adaptable perennials, building up collection of low maintenance long flowering plants and experimenting with growing in sand based mediums and peat free compost
-
Leahurst Nursery
Leahurst Nursery
Leahurst Nurseries is a 70-year-old local plant nursery, based in Barnet. We specialise in perennials, ground ferns and grasses, growing many plants from seeds and cuttings. For the last 25 years we have traded at Columbia Rd Flower Market.
-
Bright Green Fox
Bright Green Fox
A new micro nursery selling hardy perennials and grasses, all with benefits to biodiversity.
-
Edimental Nursery
Edimental Nursery
We grow (almost exclusively!) edimentals - combining the edible and the ornamental, edimental plants are in our view the perfect garden plants. They bring beauty to the garden, support a wide range of pollinators and other creatures, and offer exciting new taste experiences to boot.
-
Glendon Plant Nursery
Glendon Plant Nursery
Mostly shade loving plants, including Cardiocrinum, Hepatica, Epimedium, ferns. Also Auriculas, Tetrapanax.
-
Hardy's Cottage Garden Plants
Hardy's Cottage Garden Plants
Peat free outdoor grown herbaceous perennials.
-
Harts of Lee
Harts of Lee
We grow and sell seasonal affordable and local plants and flowers in the London Borough of Lewisham. Our base is a Sunday stall at Manor House Gardens.
-
Garden & Wood
Garden & Wood
Vintage garden tools, furniture, and ephemera.
-
Kew Plantsman
Kew Plantsman
Professional plantsman Matthew Spratt will be selling rare and unusual perennials, shrubs, grasses, bamboo, species fuchsia and potted herbs.
-
Niwaki
Niwaki
Niwaki sources and produces fine gardening tools, knives and other practical accessories from Japan. Our
products are highly valued by gardeners, craftspeople, chefs, artists, homemakers and everyone else who
appreciates thoughtfully designed, extremely useful and – dare we say it – beautiful items. -
Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses
Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses
Our beautiful, productive one acre garden and two large greenhouses are managed entirely organically. Education and experimentation are at the core of our charity; as gardeners at Brockwell Park Community Garden we aim to open wider conversations around nature-led, sustainable horticulture.
-
Friends of Arnold Circus
Friends of Arnold Circus
-
Plant Heritage
Plant Heritage
Plant Heritage is a small charity with a big ambition: to champion and protect the diversity
of garden plants. With our thousands of members and through our flagship conservation schemes
(the National Plant Collections and the Plant Guardian scheme) we are safeguarding 95,000
different plants for the future by growing them, recording them and sharing them with others. -
English Sweet Peas
English Sweet Peas
English Sweet Peas is a family run, specialist Sweet Pea company. We bread new cultivars, 2025 is our first year at Chelsea. We have over 50 years experience.
-
The Exchange
The Exchange
The Exchange is a community owned and led organisation based in Erith. We instigate collaborations between professional designer-makers and local Community Makers. Through partnership, they together enable increased and affordable access to craft skills learning, which in turn supports the maintenance of our listed old library building, our Sarah Price designed garden and wider community and social development.
-
Front Garden Flower Farm
Front Garden Flower Farm
-
John Cullen Gardens
John Cullen Gardens
